One of these things is EXACTLY like the other

I know this statement is going to elicit a "well duh" from a lot of you, but conservative talk radio just doesn't make sense anymore. Let me qualify that statement by saying that I don't actually listen to most of talk radio. Glenn Beck is about the only show I will listen to, mostly because he is the only one who doesn't seem to be just a Republican stooge. But even he seems to have gone along with a lunacy brewing amongst all the conservative pundits lately in the form of an all out irrational fear and hatred of Barack Obama.

Look I get that conservatives would be against Obama. He is, after all, a Democrat and a liberal one at that. It's not that they hate him that has me puzzled. It's that they hate him SO MUCH MORE than Hillary Clinton. Like seriously, a lot of these guys are leading me and a lot of other people to believe that come November if the Democratic primary falls in favor Hillary, they will actually be voting for her instead of their own candidate, John McCain. You get that? They actually prefer Hillary to a Republican! But if the Democratic primary falls the other way, holy crap get ready for the apocalypse because apparenly if Obama becomes president everything in the world is just going to fall apart.

Can some rational person please please PLEASE explain this to me, because I have listened to both candidates. I've heard about where they stand on the issues. And save for a few minor details and the minutae of rhetoric, I see zero difference between the Hillary and Obama. Like none. Nothing. Zip. Don't believe me? These two graphics are from the very informative website ontheissues.org. It breaks down the political philosophy of every single senator and congressman based strictly on their voting record. Conservatives are trying to say that Obama is even more liberal than Hillary. Really?

Seriously, do you see a difference, because I really don't. Again, I get conservatives hating Obama. I just don't get how they can hate him so much more than Hillary. Really it's just a feat of logic that conservative radio has managed to dig down deep inside its soul and actually find positive things to say about a Clinton period. Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse right there? Hm... maybe they have a point about this Obama guy.

Is it thinly veiled homophobia?

Can anybody explain to me why so many parents have such a stick up their ass over their kids climbing up the slide? Go to a park sometime. I guarantee within five minutes you'll hear, "No no, honey, slides aren't for climbing... No, no, honey, we only go down the slide." or some variation therein.

Seriously my-generation, did you read some study that I somehow missed? Why are you so afraid of your kid going (gasp) the wrong direction on a slide? I understand if there's actually another kid at the top waiting to slide down. But barring that, they ain't gonna pop the tires.

Science and Faith: The Real Missing Link

I preface this whole blog with the following statement. I am a Jesus-loving, God-fearing Christian with a firm belief that everything that we see (and a whole bunch of stuff that we have yet to see) was created by a sentient God.

That being said, I LOVE reading about evolution. I personally find the concept fascinating. And I cringe whenever I hear cases going before the Supreme Court where a well-meaning Christian dolt is trying to force a school district into teaching Intelligent Design. It’s not that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design. Quite the contrary. But I don’t understand how any reasonably non-moronic person can fail to grasp the essential difference between a science and a philosophy. You cannot test the existence of a Creator by scientific means – at least not yet – and I challenge anybody to state otherwise. Unfortunately for we Creationists, as of now evolution is the foremost scientific theory dealing with life on Earth and there is plenty of scientific evidence to back it up. And when a theory has that solid a foundation, the burden really does fall on dissenters to disprove it. And while, yes, there are flaws in the theory – which I think should be mentioned in textbooks right alongside the evidence – the fact is Creationists are going to have to present a bit more evidence of their own before they get rational school boards to allow a philosophy to be taught inside a science lab.

The book that first turned me on to how intriguing the science of evolution can be was the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. Prior to that, I never really knew much about the topic beyond what I and everybody else learned in 10^th grade biology – which basically amounted to vestigal organs, a bit about dominant and recessive genes and something to do with finches and the size of their beaks. But what Pinker does in his book is to essentially “reverse engineer” a human mind, showing how every aspect of human life, from the way we see, to the way we think, to the way we interact, to the emotions we feel, to the way we “made up” the concept of “God” were all shaped by our evolutionary past. While the book was probably the hardest thing I have ever read voluntarily, it brings up a lot of fascinating points to ponder, even if you don’t fully agree with the concept of evolution (which I’m still not sure I do… for reasons I’ll get into later). It was a truly life-changing book that left me wanting to know more.

Well it’s been a couple years but I finally took another plunge into that wacky world of Charles Darwin. I just finished the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins – perhaps the most famous Darwinist short of Darwin himself. In a nutshell, Dawkins presents evolution and natural selection from the point of view of the gene. He paints a probable picture of how life might have originated in the “primordial soup” and shows how DNA has become the very thing that controls every aspect of life everywhere on this planet today. One can’t help but conjure up images of The Matrix as Dawkins talks about a gene’s selfish, almost maniacal need to survive in the form of exact replicas and copies of itself – passing itself down through generations upon generations of engineered “survival machines” (a.k.a. “us”). Yes, according to Dawkins, humans, plants, insects, fungus, everything on earth that can be considered “alive” are nothing more than just elaborate “vehicles” designed for one reason and one reason only: to protect genes for long enough to produce more copies. Of course, unlike the machines in The Matrix, everything the genes do is unconscious and brought about purely by random chance. Nothing happens for a reason. It’s all accidental. Genes do nothing by effort or foresight. If a mutation gives its “survival machine” an edge on a competition, it’s purely by mistake, with natural selection giving it blind creedence.

Even as somebody who believes in God, it’s hard not to be swayed by people like Dawkins and Pinker. Beyond being brilliant scientists in their respective fields, they have such a way with words and metaphors that they break down highly mathematical concepts and make them so a completely science-illiterate person such as myself can understand. (Dawkins in particular weaves such stimulating prose, producing such droll and compelling lines like “Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication.”) What I often find myself saying is, “If evolution really happens, then it makes total sense that this is the way it would work.” But there is one thing that I have yet to glean from anything I’ve read about evolution thus far. It’s the one thing that gives me hope that the theory might one day be disproved: TIME.

There is an adage that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. With just a bit of trivial mathematical understanding, this makes perfect sense. Sure, give anything an infinite amount of time and they’ll write just about any damn thing you want. The evolution of complex organisms such as ourselves seems to evoke that adage, with each successive generation (from primordial soup to all modern life forms) representing another “monkey keystroke”, and the long and intricate spiral of DNA representing their Shakespearian text of choice. Except in this analogy, the number of monkeys is FINITE, as is the duration of typing time. In this analogy, the monkeys haven’t had all the time in the universe to produce their magnum opus. And rather than banging out the complete works of Shakespeare just once, they have apparently done it a couple billion times – once for every complex species that has ever lived. How the hell does that happen, even once, purely by accident? Especially when, as Dawkins says, most mutations (which are necessary for evolution to happen) end up being a detriment to the new offspring, resulting in its death to natural selection. As near as I can see, in my admittedly puny scientific mind, there just doesn’t seem to have been enough time for evolution (as Darwinists present it) to have produced the insanely complex and diverse forms of life that exist today. The only thing that makes logical (albeit not scientifically verifiable) sense is if evolution was at least guided by an intelligent being.

I know to some Christians, even this is an unacceptable view of life on this planet. Anything short of the divine creation of the sun, the moon, and every living being on earth – completed in seven days less than 10,000 years ago – is a sinful mockery of God. I see their point, but I sometimes wonder if it’s necessarily an either/or thing. I personally look at evolution as being the “Helio-Centric Heresy” of our time. For those of you who flunked history, Galileo was nearly put to death for making the extremely sinful suggestion that it is the sun, not the earth, which is center of our universe. The faithful of that time thought it was a mockery of God to even suggest that we weren’t the very thing that all of Creation revolved around. Today we, of course, know the truth… turns out it was even worse than Galileo let on. But I daresay there isn’t a religious or secular person alive who thinks this scientific revelation in any way diminishes the power and majesty of God. And how silly do you think the scoffers of Galileo’s theory felt when they got to heaven and realized they had been invoking God’s name over a complete and total farce? I can’t help but wonder how many antagonists of evolution might end up getting to heaven and realizing the same thing. Yes, evolution may be wrong. We may have all simply appeared here in the blink of an eye. The devil may have even placed all those fossils just to throw us off the straight and narrow path. But won’t we feel silly to have spent so much time saying, “God does NOT work that way,” only to get to heaven and have Him say, “Uh… yes I do.”

Ben Stein is coming out with a documentary this year called EXPELLED which explores a growing group of scientists who are using actual science to try and prove Intelligent Design. Further, it explores how the science community as a whole has been systematically silencing anyone who even suggests that Darwin might have been wrong. While I’m initially leery of the film (based on research I’ve done into the blacklisted scientists) I am actually very intrigued to see what kind of new experiments are being done in this field. Short of a gloriously unexpected scientific revelation (like realizing our carbon dating methods were WAY off or, ya know, somebody inventing a time machine to actually go back into the primordial soup) I can’t imagine evolution will be disproved in our lifetime.

But that’s okay. The way I see it, somewhere between Science’s inherently flawed interpretation of the universe (the foremost theory in physics today can’t even be tested!) and Religion’s inherently flawed interpretation of the Bible (nearly every passage, according to scholars, can have as many as seventy possible interpretations!)… somewhere between these two extremes of thought lies the Truth. God is in there. Science is in there. There is room for both. We just need to figure out where they meet. Or not. When the end of our life comes and we meet Jesus in the sky, will any of these trivialities really matter? I doubt it. As such, I will continue to read about evolution (or quantum physics, or string theory or any other “ungodly” science), allowing myself to be fascinated and filled with wonder – while at the same time remaining skeptical of the evidence… the way any good scientist should.

Coolness and puke do not mix

Everyone knows that becoming a parent changes you, often in ways you never expect. First of all, whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not, once you have a kid, you are no longer cool. It just doesn’t happen. You can try and hang onto it, try and tell yourself and others, “Hey, I’m still the same guy I was before,” but no, it’s gone. All of it. The only thing to do is to reinvent yourself as a different kind of cool. You know the kind of cool where you know lyrics to Laurie Berkner and High School Musical songs. Nick Jr. cool.

Still the thing that changes most once you become a parent, is your level of tolerance for gross things. You obviously have to get past what a normal person’s gag reflex would be since you’ll be changing about nine thousand diapers per week. But it doesn’t stop there. What ends up happening is that grossness actually becomes a matter of convenience. That’s why you see mothers upending their infants, putting a nose to their diaper and sniffing. It’s just faster and easier to smell for poop than to undo a onesie, pull back the elastic on a Huggies and check to see if there’s something inside. When you see a dad pick a booger out of his toddler’s nose, the ick factor is simply more convenient than searching the house for one of those little bulb suction thingies—which said toddler probably hid inside the VCR anyway. This elevated yuck threshold obviously goes hand-in-hand with the loss of coolness I mentioned, because you simply cannot be cool while sniffing a person’s butt on a daily basis. It just doesn’t happen.

But this grossness thing reached new levels of abominableness when my entire family was recently sick with the flu. On one of those fun-filled nights my one-year-old, Jesse threw up on Lauren. But he didn’t just throw up on her. He threw up on her while he was nursing. You get that? He threw up… on her breast. This wasn’t just some relatively harmless baby spittle. This was full on, chunky, stomach flu ralphage. And do you know what Lauren’s response was? After her initial, knee-jerk, “aw gross” reaction, she quickly composed herself and said, “Okay, well at least it didn’t get on the couch.”

The couch? She has vomit on her boobs and yet she’s happy because it didn’t get on the couch? That’s how far we’ve come as parents—getting thrown up on has somehow become the preferable alternative to something else. When the hell does that happen anywhere else in life? Short of getting killed by an axe-wielding psychopath, how is getting thrown up on not the worst possible outcome of any social situation? I mean imagine you’re walking through the ethnic foods section of the supermarket and some guy just walks up and blows chunks all over you—lifting up your shirt and exposing your chest before doing so of course. Could you ever find a silver lining in that? Yet somehow, as a parent, having somebody puke all over your bare naked BOOBS is actually seen as a somewhat positive thing!

Man, I really hope my kids grow up to be rockstars because it would be a shame for them to siphon so much coolness out of me and Lauren and not put it to good use.

No, not the one with Queen Latifah

I picked up the book BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE yesterday at the library... and I finished it on the plane. For those of you who haven’t seen the previews for the movie 21, which is based upon the book, this is the TRUE story of a bunch of MIT students who worked out this card-counting scheme and won millions of dollars from various casinos over the course of a couple years. If you’re a fan of Clooney’s Ocean’s 11, you’ll dig this book. It’s a really easy, really fast (did I mention I finished the whole thing in less than 24 hours), and actually quite satisfying read (see, it is possible to have all three, Dan Brown). In addition to giving a really gripping account of how these ballsy little geeks managed to get past the Vegas system (Think the Rain Main blackjack sequence times about 10), the author also gives some really cool backstory into the history of "old" Vegas and "new" Vegas (the security, the mob, the corporations, the back rooms, the strippers, the private investigation firms) in order to show you what these guys were truly up against.

So a highly recommended read that isn’t too taxing on the mind. And it’s TRUE for crying out loud. It all actually happened, which of course makes it even cooler. I’m sure some parts were pizzazed up for dramatic effect and all, but still. And the thing is, you can tell that the movie at least has the potential to be just as good. A curious thing I noticed though, the lead role is being played by a white guy when all the participants in the original scheme were Asian, and, in fact, BEING Asian, Greek or Persian was apparently key to pulling off the scheme because the pit bosses were more suspicious of white kids making big bets. But whatever, I’m rather excited to check it out once it becomes available on DVD and Blu-Ray HiDef... or you know, if I happen to catch it on TNT one night.

It's the little things

Walking through the Philadelphia International Airport at 5 o’clock this morning and seeing the disproportionate amount of bleary-eyed college students walking around has led me to two conclusions:

1) Early ass Saturday morning flights must be the dirt-cheapest way to travel considering many of said students couldn’t even afford the food they were eating (sharing Poland Springs and egg sandwiches and whatnot as they were).

and

2) Hollister must have their spring break this week.

Oh and I simply love Philadelphia graffiti.

In a stall today as I sat taking care of business I read the following: EAGLES SUCK. Nothing too mind blowing all things considered but some amusing pooper after my own heart crossed out EAGLES and replaced it with a much more general SPORTS. SPORTS SUCK. Yes... yes they do.

Also saw this charming attack on religion:

DONKEY’S TALK
PEOPLE CAN FLY
AND JESUS
LIVES IN THE SKY

What made it great were the lines some other defecator added in at a later date:

DONKEY’S TALK - YEAH, JUST LIKE THIS JACKASS
PEOPLE CAN FLY - YEAH, IN AIRPLANES
AND JESUS - THE SON OF GOD
LIVES IN THE SKY - IS ALL AROUND US YOU MORON.

God help me, but I love crass Christians... and proudly consider myself one of them.

Would you like retards with that?

There are many reasons why I never ever ever eat at McDonald's, not the least of which being that I start farting about halfway through my burger and then don't stop for three and a half days. But also, I just find it utterly depressing that I have to deal with an entire team of people who are quite literally as stupid as a person can possibly get without qualifying for a bona fide "disorder."

I ordered a Happy Meal for my daughter tonight. A Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. There are two choices when one orders a McNugget Happy Meal: a 4-McNugget meal or a 6-McNugget meal. So when I stepped up to the register and placed my order with Tardface, I said, "Yes I'd like a four McNugget Happy Meal, please." So you can imagine my shock when I looked at my receipt ten seconds later and realized my credit card had just been charged fourteen dollars for a Happy Meal that should have cost about $4.50.

"Well you said you wanted four Happy Meals," responds Tardface.

Okay, I'm sorry, Tardface. I know you're stupid. But I also know that the corporation that employs you understands that you're stupid and so has broken down everything you must do into about thirty simple phrases: Big Mac, Fries, Number Six, Super Size... I simply can't imagine that I am the first person to ever come in here and verbalize this particular order to you. I know that you know that you have a four McNugget meal, so... why, Mister McDonald's employee wouldn't you have at least clarified what you thought you heard me say before charging me for four freakin' Happy Meals? Especially when you can clearly see I am standing her with ONE DAMN KID!

Now please go get your slightly-smarter manager to come give me a refund while I continue to fart in your general direction.

In the event of a sudden change in cabin humor...

God help me, I love airline employees with a sense of humor. Even a stupid joke that you might not otherwise laugh at is rendered about ten times funnier when it is said over a P.A. system in the airport or on an airplane.

Cases in point:

I was flying from Bangor to Philadelphia a couple summers ago on one of those tiny puddle-jumper planes and the male flight attendant doing the safety lecture said, "Insert the flap into the buckle and pull the strap to tighten. If this is too confusing, exit the plane immediately as you're probably too stupid to be flying."

On another flight, the pilot came over the speaker and announced that there was a long line for the runway and we would likely be sitting here for almost an hour. But there was some good news. Can you guess what that good news was? Yep, he just saved a bunch of money on his car insurance.

And just this morning, as I sit in the New Orleans terminal with about a thousand other people after Allstar Weekend, this man with a very thick Cajun accent comes over the P.A. and says, "For anyone on standby for any flight... for any flight... standing will not get you on a flight any faster, so please feel free to grab a seat."

Seriously, under any other circumstances, none of these mildly humorous jokes would have made me laugh. But coming from somebody working in an industry where people are by nature pissed off at the public as a whole and you as an individual, it's just priceless comedy.